Gamebanshee had a chance to quiz Alpha Protocol's lead designer Chris Avellone and systems lead Matt MacLean, breaking the recent silence about Obsidian's wanna-be-James-Bond-title. Here's the interview, damn worth a read.

GB: At one point, there was talk that Alpha Protocol could be finished without killing a single enemy. Is this a result of using non-lethal weapons, or is it actually possible to utilize stealth and subterfuge to make our way through every mission?

Chris: It's not my intention to misrepresent the passive path - it will require the use of certain gadgets and weapons designed not to kill opponents. I do want to stress we worked hard to make sure there was a non-murdering path - it wasn't easy to implement this and the reactivity to it, but we thought it was important to put in a role-playing game, especially an espionage role-playing game. Taking the life of someone who may be innocent of any crime except being in your way is a big thing in the real-world, and it's a big deal in our game, too.

We think it's important to give professional and Lawful Good-style characters options for dealing with enemies that aren't slaughtering them wholesale, and the enemy targets you encounter in missions, while they are shooting at you, have their own reasons and motivations for doing so that might make a player uncomfortable will simply blowing them away - sometimes these adversaries are doing their jobs, and they aren't evil or hardbitten assholes. In some respects, this is another moral dilemma players will have to deal with - and we recognize some players won't care at all.

In addition, for players who study their opponents, make alliances, and understand the motivations of certain key figures we give them additional options. They can talk their way out of situations or make unlikely allies where a more combat-oriented character would find bullets and grenades being unloaded in their direction. Fallout 1 and Torment's talk-solution focuses meant a lot to me as a designer, and Obsidian works hard to include those options in games because we feel it's an important part of role-playing.

I critically failed my cunningness check so no witty line finishing off this newspost.